It was 55 years ago today (Feb. 1, 1964) when I Wanna Hold Your Hand became the first #1 hit for The Beatles in the USA. I was a very young lad when The Fab Four made their big splash. I went along for the ride because my two older brothers were in high school at the time and bought all the albums. So, I’ve been a Beatles fan for as long as I can remember. In fact, I can only remember a little bit of the music that I listened to before I listened to The Beatles.

I have several favorites, or near-favorites on my Beatles playlist. There’s one song that haunts me. For many years I paid no attention to the lyrics. This song has a great beat and an awesome sound. It’s a real toe-tapper. But then there’s the lyrics.

Lyrics – Run For Your Life

I’d rather see you dead, little girl,

Than to be with another man.

You’d better keep your head, little girl,

Or I won’t know where I am.

You’d better run for your life if you can, little girl,

Hide your head in the sand, little girl,

Catch you with another man,

That’s the end ah, little girl.

Well you know that I’m a wicked guy

And I was born with a jealous mind.

And I can’t spend my whole life

Tryin’ just to make you toe the line.

Repeat 2nd stanza.

Let this be a sermon,

I mean ev’rything I said.

Baby, I’m determined

And I’d rather see you dead.

Repeat 2nd stanza

Repeat 1st Stanza

Repeat 2nd Stanza

John Lennon wrote these words. I guess this was before he tried to be a pacifist. He admitted in a 1980 Playboy interview that he treated women badly. “All that ‘I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved’ was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically… any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself and I hit.”

I’ve heard many people argue that even though John wrote these lyrics, he wasn’t writing about himself. Apparently, he was writing a story about some crazy jealous dude – but not him. Based on his own words as a younger lad, and based on his statements that he wished he had never written this song – I tend to believe that it’s autobiographical.

It’s a shame that this song has such nasty lyrics. Take this same beat and melody and put it with decent lyrics and it would probably be my favorite Beatles song. Bummer.

Over the past few months, I’ve been preparing to die. Or at least I’ve started preparing for that inevitability. It’s actually been kind of fun.

I don’t actually believe that I’m going to die soon; not that one can ever be too sure about those things. I don’t have a terminal disease, nor a death wish. I’ve just seen a lot of people die in the past few years, and I want to be ready.

As a death prepper, here’s what I’ve been up to lately:

I’ve written my own obit. It’s ready to go, once somebody else is able to add the date and cause of death.

I’ve chosen the songs I want to be played at my death party (or memorial service, if you will).

I’ve prepared a shared online spreadsheet to make sure my wife has access to all the financial accounts information.

I’ve decided on cremation, because I really like the word “cremains.” (I hope you cremember me when I’m gone.)

My headstone is being prepared. Tasteful little thing, no 24K gold or diamond studs. I don’t feel like I actually need a headstone anywhere in the world, but my wife would like to have our markers side-by-side. That’s a good enough reason for me.

I do have a couple of things left to do:

I’m working on a solution that will delete almost all of my online accounts when I die, except for this blog and my Twitter feed. I’ll leave those for my kids to look back on someday.

I still need to prepare a will. This should be moot, because I expect my wife to live 30 more years after I die, and everything goes to her with or without a will. However, it’s not a sure thing that I go first, so a last will and testament needs to be prepared.

I’m going to prepare a 5-minute video about my life. My whole life condensed into 5 minutes. That’s going to be a challenge. Lots of good stuff will hit the cutting room floor, but death is cruel – and most people will start to check out after five minutes anyway. Why a 5-minute video? I don’t know; I just want to.

And lastly, to steal phrase, I need to get busy living.

If and when you see my obit, you’ll see that I don’t use the phrase “he passed away.” You don’t pass away – you fail away. You didn’t pass, you failed. You failed to live forever. Death is not a hall pass, it’s a pink slip.

I’m starting 2019 on a personal mission. My plan is to drink 50 different beers in the first 50 days of the year. That doesn’t necessarily mean one beer each day, but a total of 50 over 50 days.

Then, starting February 20, I will go 50 days without a beer.

Then, starting April 10, I will take a self-assessment. Do I feel healthier? Am I happier? Am I an emotional wreck? Is there no significant difference?

I like beer. I really like craft beers. I really like craft beers that are dark, or hoppy, or unique; or possibly all three things at the same time. I hate to think that I’ll be better off without beer, but maybe that will be the case. My father had to stop drinking during the last 8 to 10 years of his life. He still liked beer, but beer didn’t like him.

I’ll keep a running list here, and then report out on my conclusions in April and May.

Most recently, it was disclosed that “Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the Times reports. It gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read users’ private messages. It allowed Yahoo to view real-time feeds of friends’ posts, despite the fact it publicly claimed to have ended that kind of snooping years ago…” (lots of good/bad stuff at The Ringer)

“Facebook News” isn’t The News, and cannot be trusted.

Hacked! Login credentials for 50 million users were stolen in September 2018.

In May, at a congressional hearing it was noted that Cambridge Analytica, under the direction of Steve Bannon, sought to “exploit certain vulnerabilities in certain segments to send them information that will remove them from the public forum, and feed them conspiracies and they’ll never see mainstream media.”

Reports in April indicated that “Facebook granted Zuckerberg and other high ranking executives powers over controlling personal information on a platform that is not available to normal users.”

In October 2017, Facebook expanded their engagement with Republican-linked firm Definers Public Affairs to discredit “activist protesters.” This was the whole “let’s imply that Facebook critics are anti-Semitic and somehow link the protesters to George Soros.” Oy.

As reported by Vice News in October, “Facebook’s political ad tool let us buy ads “paid for” by Mike Pence and ISIS.”

Zuck is creepy. His company is creepy. I’m creeped out by them.

Time Suck. Not wondering what I’m missing on FB is surprisingly liberating. I still have several other time sucks, but FB is no longer one of them.

The signal to noise ratio on FB is low. Really low. The amount of time I spent sifting through the bullshit to find a few nuggets is depressing to think about. Using more trusted sources for reading material is far more productive.

I learned to hate the fakeness of it all.

Fake birthday wishes from people who wouldn’t otherwise say a word to you if FB didn’t tell them that hey “It’s Barry’s Birthday, help him celebrate!” Gag me. These gestures lost all meaning for me – even to the point of being negative communications rather then positive.

Fake outrage over every little stupid thing.

Fake enthusiasm about the minutiae of life. Seriously people, 99% of what you post just isn’t that interesting – same goes for 98% of my former posts.

FB has about 2.4 million active users in Q4 of 2018. That’s all fine and good, but I think I’ll align with the 5.2 million humans worldwide who aren’t aren’t in The Book.

I thought I would suffer from F.O.M.O. (the Fear Of Missing Out), but so far I think I’m experiencing J.O.A.F. (the Joy of Avoiding Facebook).

For a while, I too was caught up in all the social sharing, thus limiting my ability to be present and live in the moment. It’s easy to start viewing everything we do with the lens of our phone camera. I’m over the need to constantly report on my life rather than living it. Except maybe here on this blog – like the good ole days.

I still want to be connected with most of the people who were my Facebook friends. It’s a bit sad to think that deleting this one connection might turn out to be the end of any communications with a friend or family member. But it seems that if our relationship is more than Facebook telling us that we’re friends, then our friendship will endure. Almost all of my former FB friends know how to get in touch with me via many different technology options. And I know where they are, too.

Voicethread is increasingly being used in education at all levels. Some of their features (from their website) include:

Creating: Upload, share and discuss documents, presentations, images, audio files and videos. Over 50 different types of media can be used in a VoiceThread.

Commenting: Comment on VoiceThread slides using one of five powerful commenting options: microphone, webcam, text, phone, and audio-file upload.

Sharing: Keep a VoiceThread private, share it with specific people, or open it up to the entire world. Learn more about sharing VoiceThreads.

Below is a link to an example Voicethread created by an educator and her students. It was easy to embed the Voicethread into Brightspace, but WordPress (this site) doesn’t play nicely with embed code. Click on the image below to view the Voicethread.

Voicethread provides for both audio and text comments. It is one of the most accessible Web 2.0 platforms that you will find.

Voicethread also offers a series of higher ed webinars “to improve your pedagogical use of VoiceThread or plan a group viewing of an archive with your colleagues to stimulate an engaging professional development event on campus about teaching with VoiceThread.” The webinars are presented by Michelle Pacansky-Brock, a Voicethread evangelist and an eLearning professional educator.

How about those school secretaries? Can I get a booyah!? The text below was printed in the Tuesday edition (4/21/2015) of the Superior Telegram. Here’s a link to the letter at their website, although it will probably disappear soon. This was written as an ode to my wife, who is a school secretary extraordinaire. I’ll add more editorial comments at the bottom.

This week is Administrative Professional’s Week in the U.S. In the old days, it was known as National Secretaries Week. My particular interest lies with those who are administrative professionals at our schools, especially those within the School District of Superior.

What are some of the different jobs these people perform on a regular basis? Here’s a partial list:

• She (or it could be a he) is a public relations specialist when a parent has a complaint about a teacher or a policy or a school incident.

• She performs triage when an ailing or injured student walks in the office and the school nurse is already occupied or otherwise unavailable.

• She is the security officer, deciding who is allowed past the locked front door and who isn’t.

• She is the receptionist who first greets visitors after they enter the school.

• She’s the shrink who listens while students and colleagues pour out their troubles.

• She assumes the role of the Public Information Officer when a journalist (or blogger) calls for information about an incident or for any other reason.

• She’s the social worker who keeps both eyes on the lookout for signs of a child in danger.

• She’s the legal eagle who tries to protect students and staff by knowing who has which restraining order and who just got charged for drug possession or child neglect.

• She’s also the one who puts up with a multitude of crazy parents that think she’s not doing a good enough job raising their children for them.

• She is the babysitter that parents take advantage of when they don’t pick their kids up from school in a timely manner. She often stays late because at least one kid is still sitting in her office waiting to be picked up, hours after school ended.

• She is the superhero who will be the human shield to protect your child from physical harm.

• She’s the administrative support professional who doesn’t care if you call her a secretary; because if she had that kind of an ego, she never would have taken this job in the first place.

• You might have noticed that most of the items above are not typical duties of a secretary. You’d be right about, and yes, she does those normal support things as well.

She’s also the person who gets derided because she “gets the summers off, so how hard can that job be?” Then she bites her tongue rather than explaining that after going through 10 months of the activities on list above on a daily basis, that yes, a person needs some time to get her own head on straight and to fire up for the next 10 months of stress and lack of appreciation.

She’s also a mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend and neighbor. Appreciation. Respect. Love. They deserve it, and then some.

End of letter to the editor

She’s also one of the school employees with the lowest compensation, both in salary and in total. I would never argue that the teachers and others at the school should be paid less, because they shouldn’t. I can argue strenuously that the administrative support personnel should be compensated more highly. Here are a few of my thoughts about their compensation:

My wife is a skilled restaurant manager and server. She could make as much money waiting tables three nights a week at a decent restaurant as she makes as a school secretary.

Her school district benefits have been stripped to the level where they no longer matter much, so again a server position with no benefits is pretty much at the same level.

Because she has time off in the summer, her cost of family health insurance benefits (which we can’t afford in the first place) would be higher than what her boss (the principal) would pay for family health insurance. Since she is not on the payroll at all during July, she (and other employees in similar positions) would have to pay the full cost of the health insurance premium for that month. For family coverage, that would be approximately $1,500 for that one month. So yes, the lowly-paid school secretary would pay $1,500 more annually for her health insurance than does the much more highly-paid school principal. Maybe this is moot since the cost of health insurance is so far out of bounds in the first place.

My wife has the skills to be employed in more highly compensated positions. That’s a good thing, because if I died or became unable to work, there is ZERO CHANCE that she could support herself and our kids on what she makes as a school secretary. She would have to quit the job that she loves in order to support her family. In other words, the only way that our family can afford for her to work as a school secretary is for my salary to subsidize the low pay offered by the school district. I wouldn’t care about that if they deserved her loyalty – but they don’t. Their actions about employee compensation speaks much more loudly than their words of faint praise.

Prezi is almost completely inaccessible to students with disabilities, particularly low-vision and no-vision students (and faculty, of course). Prezi admits as much, and currently don’t seem to have any concrete plans of addressing this shortcoming. In their own words:

Regarding a request for a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) from Prezi; “I’m afraid we don’t currently have a VPAT for Prezi. Prezi is not ADA compliant.” Prezi Community Forum, October 8, 2014

“However, we are working hard to make the Prezi website fully 508 compliant. For example we are experimenting with a nice transcript outline for presentations to let our users get a clue what is inside the presentation.” Prezi Communty Forum, March 5, 2010. Notice that this comment is almost five years old, and they have now enabled the possibility of a transcript, but have made very little progress to date to address the many other accessibility concerns with Prezi. Their actions (lack thereof) are speaking louder than words.

Screenshot of one of my old Prezis – you can no longer embed a Prezi in WordPress.com, such as this site. This Prezi was created before they added the transcript feature. Click the image to visit the Prezi site.

Here is a partial list of the a11y problems that will be encountered when trying to view a Prezi via assistive technologies:

“Text” (in appearance only, apparently) written in a Prezi is not readable by a screen reader program.

It’s not possible to add alternate text to any images that you include in your Prezi.

You cannot tab through a presentation, which is standard operating procedure for keyboard access. Tabbing through the links on the Prezi will result in completely skipping over the presentation frame.

On the plus side, there have been a few enhancements that help lessen the accessibility issues with using Prezi in education; including:

You can now use keyboard shortcuts (instead of only mouse movements) to create a Prezi, although you have to be able to use a mouse to turn them on (off by default).

The transcript feature is a minor improvement, however there is no way to edit the transcript, or export it or embed it along with an embedded presentation. You have to enter the text into the Prezi in the order that you want it to appear in the transcript. Anything that you add as an afterthought will be at the end of the transcript, even if it is at the beginning of the presentation. Prezi spokespeople say that the transcript is to “support search engines,” not users with disabilities.

If you look at the transcript in my Jekyll Island Prezi, you’ll see that the text is out of order. I would have to re-create the presentation from scratch to get the transcript correct.

You can add an audio track to a Prezi, which would enhance accessibility for students without hearing disabilities. You can add audio narration at specific points in your Prezi. The audio files will start when you reach the chosen point in the presentation and stop playing when you move away from that place in the Prezi.

So, maybe you love Prezi and have no plans to stop using it for providing course content to your students. That’s your choice, but I believe you also need to (or should) make another choice; and that choice is to always make an alternative presentation that is equivalent in content and fully accessible to students with disabilities.